00:00This is pretty big. It's in many ways the first really significant Supreme Court rebuke of the administration.
00:07And this is a court that's kind of gone out of its way to accommodate him as much as possible.
00:11So the legal ruling is not surprising.
00:14There's it's not that anyone was going, oh, this was the president was was OK on the law.
00:19He clearly was not. It's the fact that the court is willing to stand up to him.
00:23That's really striking. Right.
00:25Standing up to him and including by some of the justices that he nominated as well.
00:30Neil Gorsuch, for instance, ruling against the tariffs, although Brett Kavanaugh and two other conservative justices did dissent.
00:37We should mention that there's a headline here from a U.S. official.
00:40It's what we call at Bloomberg a hothead.
00:43President Trump will travel to China from March 31st to April 2nd.
00:47And I think I bring this up because this has been one of the criticisms of the administration, which is
00:52that the president has focused a lot more on foreign policy, foreign affairs than he has on domestic issues, particularly
00:59those most relevant to Americans who feel the pressure of inflation and the pressure of the affordability crisis.
01:06Do you expect an uptick in foreign policy adventures from this White House now that we have this legal setback
01:13from the Supreme Court?
01:14So I do expect the uptick, but I'm not sure they're related.
01:18Second term presidents almost always focus more and more on foreign policy, partly because they are thinking about their legacy
01:24and partly because their control over their domestic political party inevitably ebbs since they're not going to be on the
01:31ballot again.
01:32And so every member of the Republican Party, however afraid they might be of Donald Trump, is less afraid with
01:38each passing day just because he has less ability to influence their political fortunes.
01:42So that kind of leaves him to divert out to the foreign policy stance.
01:47But I think what's more the striking thing here is essentially is how much control, self-control he will be
01:53able to exert to exert when this rebuke on what is his signature policy from a court that he thinks
02:00of as essentially his property.
02:02What's going to happen next is I'm not sure anyone can predict it.
02:06Gotham, I mean, these tariffs have been really the centerpiece, the backbone of much of what how President Trump interacts
02:14with other countries, getting them to make investment announcements in the U.S.
02:19because of the threat, tacit, explicit, however you want to phrase it, of tariffs.
02:24Has he lost that power, that leverage right now?
02:28I mean, he's clearly lost a lot of it.
02:30And what's striking is how broad the Supreme Court decision is.
02:33It's really it's not just saying you can't do this under this particular sort of twisting of the law.
02:38Well, the decision seems quite, quite destructured to say you just can't do this without the court.
02:43But while President Trump got many announcements of major investments in the United States, it's really not clear that any
02:49of that was very substantive.
02:51There's some combination of sort of other countries sort of playing the game and giving his press releases.
02:56And also, I think a lot of other countries that realized that if they waited this out, there was a
03:00very good chance the Supreme Court would rule this way.
03:02So they were just better off, you know, giving him shiny objects and letting the game play out.
03:09From the administration's perspective, is there anything they can do to kind of drag their feet on complying with this
03:15Supreme Court ruling?
03:17On complying? So if they do, then we are in the midst of sort of what I think everybody has
03:24been trying to avoid, even the Trump administration, which is a direct confrontation between the Supreme Court and the presidency.
03:32That would get very that could get very bad, very fast.
03:35And I think no one wants to see it.
03:37What they will probably do is find other legal sort of pretext to try and exert these tariffs.
03:42But I think what we'll have to watch is the Supreme Court ruling does not mandate whether the money that
03:49has been already collected has to be refunded.
03:52That is going to be complete chaos.
03:55And watching that legal process as companies sue for what was, after all, we now know a clearly unconstitutional, unjustified
04:03taking.
04:05Like, I mean, it'll be a full employment act for lawyers for the next five years, I guess.
04:11Gotham, boy, if I'm in Congress today, if I'm a Republican, if I'm a Democrat, I feel like the president's
04:18been wounded here a little bit.
04:19Do you expect to see a change in tone with the president and his relationship with both parties in Congress
04:26here?
04:26And boy, we have the State of the Union coming up just next week.
04:29Yeah, the president has been wounded.
04:32It's not once.
04:32This might be the that's not just once.
04:34This might be the most significant wound, but, you know, there is blood in the water and the Democratic starts
04:42are the Democratic sharks are starting to circle.
04:45I think you're also starting to see, you know, right now it's only Republicans who are sort of leaving office.
04:50Thumb Tillis is the most prominent example of people who are just sort of saying enough is enough.
04:54I cannot swallow this anymore.
04:56But they're not the last one.
04:58I suspect they won't be the last ones with every number that he tricks down in the polls.
05:02That's going to get easier.
05:03In some sense, I think the Supreme Court may actually have saved Donald Trump from himself a little bit because
05:09these tariffs were not popular and striking them down might actually help him a little bit in public opinion, depending,
05:18again, upon how he reacts to it.
05:20I think we're all waiting for the next Truth Social post with bated breath.
05:22We certainly are.
05:24And we should mention that Caitlin Collins of CNN did send out a social media post saying that President Trump
05:31called it a disgrace, the Supreme Court ruling, and reportedly told the governors at the White House breakfast with governors
05:38that he has a backup plan.
05:41And, Gautam, what does this mean for companies that have been having to pony up the money for tariffs and
05:47now, because the tariffs are ruled illegal, have the possibility of maybe claiming them back, clawing them back if we
05:54move in that direction?
05:55How do they make decisions?
05:57How do they move forward with any kind of planning?
05:59How do they think through what their next year, two years, three years looks like?
06:05I mean, that has been the central question of every kind of corporate decision making since the day Donald Trump
06:10returned to office.
06:11The level of uncertainty is high, and it's going to keep getting higher because this is not an administration that
06:17seems to have a back-down mode.
06:21My guess would be that the refunds and things like that will be handled by the lawyers, and if you
06:26get it, you get it.
06:27And if you don't, well, you know, that is not, in some sense, that is not a decision that companies
06:33have an ability to influence.
06:34They should try to get the money back.
06:36Whether they'll succeed or not, I have no idea.
06:38What they have to worry much more about, I think, is what will the next step be?
06:44Because there will certainly be a lashing out, and does that mean that companies that have thought they had gained
06:51exemptions or thought they had stable windows to trade are going to lose that?
06:55They might.
06:55They might.
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